Offline with Jon Favreau - Is Fox News Doomed?

Episode Date: May 21, 2023

Kat Abu and Andrew Lawrence watch Fox News every night so you don’t have to. As researchers at Media Matters, a right-wing media watchdog, it’s their job to monitor the conspiracies and propaganda spreading on the network. Andrew is one of the nation’s leading Fox experts, having watched primetime Fox since the 2016 campaign and Kat has recently brought their work to new audiences, breaking down Fox News in weekly viral TikTok explainers. They join Jon to talk about this unusual moment at Fox News, whether the network is finally facing its comeuppance, and what watching these shows for a living does to a person. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

When Trump left office, I thought Hannity was going to cry on television because he no longer had his bestie in the Oval Office. When everything was happening in Brazil with Bolsonaro, that's when I thought Tucker might cry. Like it's two very different ideas there. And you have some things that like Tucker will say and then Hannity will immediately say the opposite in the next hour. They just don't have the juice, though. No one has the same juice as Tucker. There's no riz, completely riz-less. And that's true for the rotating host too. I mean, it's a mess. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. Hey everyone, welcome to Offline.

Week two of the Offline Challenge has come to a close. Turns out meditation? Not for me. But we'll get to that later. First up, we're talking about Fox News. You may have noticed that America's most popular propaganda network is in a bit of disarray. Late last month, just a few days after Fox settled with Dominion Voting Systems for three quarters of a billion dollars, they fired their highest rated primetime host, Tucker Carlson, who has since announced he'll be relaunching his show on Elon Musk's dying platform. And of course, these changes are occurring as Fox fights off rising competitors to their right and prepares for a cutthroat 2024 Republican primary. For the first time, Fox News feels vulnerable.

Or maybe we just want to think it is. Today, I want to talk about the future of the network with two Fox News experts, Andrew Lawrence and Kat Abu. Andrew and Kat watch Fox every day for a living. They're part of the primetime Fox monitoring team at Media Matters, a nonprofit media watchdog that tracks and reports on the conspiracies and propaganda spreading across right-wing media. If you've ever seen a tweet or TikTok breaking down some ridiculous Tucker moment, you're likely already familiar with the work of Media Matters. Lately, as Media Matters' Tucker Watcher in residence, Kat has taken that work to another level, breaking down the most insane trends in conservative media on Twitter and TikTok to new, younger audiences.

As she puts it, she watches conservatives for work, but makes fun of them for pleasure. And Andrew is probably one of the nation's leading Fox experts, having watched primetime Fox since the 2016 campaign, which gave him a front row seat to the rise and fall of Trump and Tucker across the network. I invited them both on to talk about this unusual moment at Fox News and the ways the network has evolved over the years. But I also wanted to know what watching Fox News for a living

does to a person. What followed was an interesting conversation about the shifting influence between Fox and the Republican Party and the way specific trends and topics emerge on the network. As always, if you have comments, questions, or concerns, please email us at offline at cricket.com and stick around after the interview to hear how Max and I did in the second week of the Offline Challenge. Hint, we're backsliding.

Here's Andrew Lawrence and Kat Abu. Andrew Lawrence and Kat Abu, welcome to Offline. Thanks. Thank you for having me. Thanks for having us. So the content gods have blessed us with good timing since Matt Drudge just reported this week that Fox is shaking up its primetime lineup. I want to get to that in a bit. But before we do, you two watch Fox News primetime for a living. So first question, are you okay? What has this done to you? Yeah, you know, I've been doing this for seven years now,

and I've been on Fox primetime the entire time. time and I mean it breaks your brain like it does but I think that um you know Kat and I are blessed to work with some really fun and really brilliant people and we find a way to mostly have fun with it you know it's the same people the same the same garbage almost every single night uh there's a lot of gallows humor involved um there's definitely tough nights. I think that, you know, I say this all the time, the days where there's a mass shooting or something awful like that. And you know that in an hour you're going to have to sit there and watch Fox News hosts say that the problem was doors or we just need more guns or just gross stuff. You know, it's really tough. But I think that also, you know, like you just said, we watch Fox News so you don't have to, and it's really important for people to know what's

going on on Fox News. I mean, they run the Republican Party, they run the conservative movement, and so that sort of gives you a feeling like you're doing something, even if it's really small, that at least for me, helps me out. And I know Kat has it a little bit tougher than me, because she has to watch Tucker, or had to watch Tucker every single night.

And his show was something else, man. It was something else. So I'll let Kat describe her mental state because I'm not sure I can. Yeah, please. You had that you had the Tucker account. So yeah, yeah. A very weird thing to be known for. But yeah, it depends on what you mean by OK. I mean, I think our support system on staff is really great. But you definitely like develop this weird language and way of thinking that you don't get in pretty much any other job. Like any breaking news headline, I think of like, how will it be filtered through Fox or oh, my God, like Sean Hannity will love that, which is really weird. It's a weird thing to automatically go to at any point. When you were watching Tucker every night, like take me through a typical night, like where and how would you watch? What would you look for? Are you with people? Are you guys all together in the Media Matters office? Are you sober? What's what's going on? Well, we go in and out of the office. We're a hybrid workplace. Usually I'm here in my living room where I film my TikToks and I'm watching on my computer. Sometimes I'll put it on the TV as well,

just to kind of have like a little lag time if I'm behind on clipping something. And you're basically just watching it. It's like the same five narratives over and over again with a little bit of spice each time of just pure hatred. And you get to the point where you can like kind of mouth words that you know they're going to say as they say them, especially when it comes to like Tucker and Hannity, they get these phrases that they just love to use all the time. So yeah, it breaks your brain, but you get used to it. Andrew, how would you say the content and commentary on Fox has changed since you first started watching for Media Matters or has it? No, it has, I think, to a certain degree. I mean, the cat kind of touched on this.

The topics and the tone sort of remain the same, you know, and and but what Tucker did, Tucker made it. Tucker was very dangerous in the way that he brought the most extreme elements into your Meemaw and Peepaw's living room every single night. And that was different. That was new. Without Tucker, your grandparents wouldn't know who lives at TikTok are or Matt Walsh or Chris Ruffo wouldn't be the trustee at a university right now without Tucker Carlson. So Tucker was willing to sort of dig in there. But I mean, look, there's a handful of people on the planet who know what Fox News was like before Tucker and before Trump, as well as you do. And I think, you know, if you look back to starting in 2008

through 15, 16, you've got birtherism, Ebola, Benghazi, the knockout game for crying out loud, you know, and that so it's all that mix, you know, genocide type of stuff that was missing in the Fox news pre Tucker to where I think that, you know, they would go after affirmative action and stuff like that. It was a little bit more country club racism, which is still awful, but Tucker's sitting out there saying like getting people fired up saying that there's a race war, you know, that we are we are Rwanda now. They are coming to hunt white people is it was his message. And that was more it was certainly more extreme, a little bit more dangerous.

But the tone and tenor of Fox News, it hasn't changed much. It didn't change much with Tucker. Kat, could you talk a little bit about the sort of the media matters strategy here? Like, I imagine if you're watching Fox primetime? Are you looking for the most extreme comments? Are you looking for stuff you can mock? Like, what are you hoping to get out of clipping this and then showing non-Fox viewers what's happening? I mean, as far as my Twitter, I just pick anything that I want to be able to refer back to or something that's like completely ridiculous. I mean, some of these graphics are incredible, especially when it comes to like Hunter Biden. But as far as our site, because we have a lot of clips with transcript on our site, Andrew's actually the one who picks all of those. So we

are watching the entire night because we're rapid response. So we're watching the entire night, following the show, following these narratives every single day of the week. And then if there's something that should be put up for posterity on our site, it goes to Andrew. And we also work on content throughout the week. You know, we have documents for, you know, my coworker Alicia did a great thing on climate change last year. And we have another big document coming in a couple of weeks. And it's just, it's a mix of things, you know? Yeah. I've heard some people argue that, you know, Fox isn't necessarily changing people's minds or radicalizing their politics. It's just attracting people who already share the same views and same politics.

Andrew, what do you think about that? I think it's sort of true. I think that there's people that harbor these resentments. And what Fox News does is they give people targets. So the target is school boards all of a sudden out of nowhere. It's the transgender community. It's just teachers in general. It doesn't matter, you know. What they do is they give them targets. But then they also, you know, again, introducing these elements, these incredibly extreme elements into mainstream

politics is really where Fox News sort of drills down. And that's like that's really what they're good at. So, yeah, I mean, I think I think it's a little bit of both, to be honest with you. I mean, I think that that they they help gin up these resentments and then they let these people know that it's OK as well, you know, let them think that it's OK. A really important part of Fox News programming is reinforcing and telling their viewers over and over again that they're not racist, that actually it's the left that's racist, black people are racist towards white people, but you're not racist. It's not you. Don't worry about it. You know, it's a big part of that. And then at that point, that encourages these people to go a little bit further, right? The viewers and express themselves in ways that

maybe they wouldn't have felt comfortable with in ways that aren't socially acceptable, but they feel that they are because Fox News told them they are. It is interesting because I thought when the text was released that supposedly was the text that got Tucker fired, that was him being racist in a slightly different way than he is on the show every night because that was him just saying, oh, white people, white men don't fight that way. And on the show, it's more like, you're not racist.

They're making you the victim. It's their fault. It's not you. And there is like a little bit of a subtle difference there because it does give people, like you said, the permission structure to say, okay, I okay i'm a good person with those texts it was nothing that he hasn't said on his show before he said all of that just in slightly different language i mean why is rwanda his favorite bogeyman there have been countless atrocities throughout history and that's the one he chooses every time because it scares his audience more than anything else. And it's the same stuff every single time. And that text was

nothing new. He tries to be a little bit more clever with it on air as well. And if you don't watch every single night, we're referring to Rwanda because that's what Tucker would say. He would say, we are headed towards Rwanda. And what he actually meant and what his viewers knew that he meant was white genocide. But that is, you know, that is, that is an incredibly loaded term. And look, Tucker isn't very scared to say very many things, but coming right out and saying like black people are about to start hunting white people like that, that's not gonna, that's not gonna fly even on Fox news. But if you say we're headed towards Rwanda, everybody knows, everybody knows what you mean. It's the exact same thing. And so, yeah,

he could be very clever with it on air, but the sentiment was always there. So most of us have people we know, family we love who watch Fox. Kat, I know you grew up in a conservative family and said that Fox was on a lot. Why do you think their shtick works on people? Why is it believablevable i think a lot of it is just like this american culture that you get where you know you're supposed to believe in like patriotism all these things and as someone who grew up with that you don't want to imagine that everything you were you grew up being taught was wrong like that is a mortifying realization and you have to relearn so many things. I think that that's a big part of it. I mean, there's also, of course, the bigotry,

the just textbook racism. But for a lot of these people that you're like, why would they believe that when I could imagine them believing something else? It's just how it's always been. And they see no reason to break out of that. And Fox is kind of like comfort food, especially when those people get a lot older. It's the messages that they want to see. You said, you know, people need to know that the scary things are stupid as well. They either go all in on, oh, my God, this is so funny. And Fox is technically entertainment, or they go all in on this is so scary. It's both things. Two things can be true at once. How do you think sort of the entertainment and the fear intersect at Fox to really gin people up? I actually have a great example of that. And

this is a famous example. It was recent was Tucker's special on testicle tanning. Right. And it's hilarious and it's silly. And the were so funny but at the at the root of that you have the fears of uh uh no more testosterone like testosterone levels going down and which which gets into the whole um we're not having enough babies you know one one certain group of people isn't having enough babies you know and and the demasculization of america and which is going to lead to the end of civilization like that it all ties into that tucker isn't trying to convince people to go damn their testicles he's trying to convince people at least i hope he's not maybe but uh what he's trying to convince people of is that masculinity is dying in america

and the reason why is it's the woke mob and. And that's where that silliness comes into like, well, it's actually dangerous as well. You know, it's elevating a lot of these things, a lot of these beliefs that we still see in incel communities, white supremacist communities, that type of thing. And it's giving it that mainstream audience. And we all joke about it.

You know, it's silly and it makes them kind of look like a clown. But at the same time, it's getting that stuff into the mainstream yeah absolutely you look at things like you know the green m&m debacle um woke lego woke pretty much anything and uh it's so ridiculous when you look at it but it's to underscore all of these ideas of you know limiting what books kids can read not not talking about sexual orientation, punishing trans people. And so it's important to look at both sides, like not to both sides, but like it's important to notice that both of those things are true at once. Like if you

let yourself be consumed by fear, it's so hard to like keep going. These people are using these inane topics to spread a lot of fear to other people and just buying into one side of that doesn't help anyone yeah like i think the conservatives try to be funny and i don't find them all that funny like even political beliefs aside but you can tell that they use a lot of mockery, right? Because they like mocking people, especially like marginalized people. But they sort of try to speak with this kind of mockery. Greg Gutfeld does this a lot on his show. Jesse Waters does this a lot.

That I wonder if that sort of drawn people in as well, in addition to the scare tactics. You know, I said a lot in the past that all Tucker Carlson's show was, it was an hour of him being a jerk to the people that you don't like. And that was a big part. Oh, you don't like Kamala Harris? Well, here's 20 minutes of me mocking her laugh. You don't like Joe Biden, Anthony Fauci? Oh, look, I'm going to make fun of how small he is. And like, oh, he's not really that masculine, is he? And it's a huge part of that. And that's very addicting as well, I think, for the audience. So there's this long running debate about how much Fox News matters today. Dan Pfeiffer tells the story that during Obama's first term in the White House, our research showed that most of Fox's conspiracies and freakouts like didn't really

break through to most voters who weren't part of the 2% of the electorate that watches Fox. By 2013, we were hearing Fox conspiracies repeated to us regularly in focus groups of swing voters. And the difference was Facebook, where this shit just traveled way past Fox viewers. I'm wondering, like, with Facebook and other social media platforms on the decline, with cable on the decline, with the right wing media ecosystem sort of as crowded and online as it's ever been. How much influence do you think Fox has today? Does it still have the same influence it's always had? What do you think, Andrew?

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that, you know, the Ailes era of Fox News, I think you had Fox News sort of existed to prop up the Republican Party. And after Ailes left, I see the Republican Party existing to prop up Fox News to where their entire goal right now, these Republican politicians, is to get interviews on Fox News and to ingratiate themselves with conservative media and right wing media, because that's the only way they're going to win a primary. If Tucker Carlson or Matt Walsh or Libs of TikTok comes out and says, I'm endorsing, you know, Chud Gruntley over here instead of Greg Abbott, Greg Abbott's screwed, you know, so he's sitting there and he has to do this stuff.

You know, Ron DeSantis shipping migrants off to different places. That came directly from Fox News, from Tucker Carlson. And he was telling them exactly where to send them to. Send them to Washington, D.C. and Martha's Vineyard. Two days later, they're in Washington, D.C. and Martha's Vineyard because DeSantis knows that he needs to get on Fox News and get on their good side if he's going to jump in this primary. So that's sort of how I see it. I see the reason why these conspiracy theories are sort of taking off now where they didn't before is because the Republican politicians need Fox News. And so they're breathing life into this stuff and making it more mainstream. Once a senator says that the great replacement theory

is real and he says it on 60 Minutes or Face the Nation or something like that. You weren't getting that before. You know, it was very much staying in the bubble. But now they need that. They have got to get on that side. And then, you know, long term, that's killing them in the generals right now. But that's that's their lot in life right now. If they want to win a primary, they have to have to push those extremes. And so I think that's a big reason why why we're seeing seeing that stuff. So it's not necessarily the size of the audience, whether it's shrinking or not. It's sort of Fox has outsized influence with elites in the Republican Party and and the people who donate, the people who run for office. And that sort of symbiotic

relationship is keeping the whole thing going. What I've what I've been seeing lately is, you know, Fox News is influence outside of the bubble, I think, has shrunk considerably to whereas, you know, you remember with Ebola and Benghazi, you know, that that started with Fox News and it went out and it was everywhere all of a sudden. But inside of that bubble, their influence has become their grip on the base of the Republican Party has strengthened. It's much more influential with the base right now, I think, than it was in the past. All right, Kat. So how much changes with Tucker's departure? What percentage of the show's influence was the host and what percentage was the 8 p.m. time slot? What would you say? Oh, I mean, Andrew and I have said this over and over again. Tucker needed Fox way more than Fox News needed Tucker. I mean, he was the face of the network and they were willing to let him go. I mean, it's the same thing as O'Reilly, who had so much influence over media outside of the right.

And now, unless you're really far right, you don't really know what he's up to. You don't hear about Bill O'Reilly. Tucker just used that time slot, that super powerful time slot that people are used to turning their TV on and watching. And he used that to spread some extremely dangerous rhetoric and ideas. And that's what it was. It was the fact that he was put in a position

to push whatever he wanted to. And he had ridiculous amount of freedom. So I think having Tucker there is incredibly dangerous. But Fox in every hour is doing stuff like this. Tucker was just really good at pinpointing that far right stuff and bringing it on and letting it trickle down to like the rest of Fox. You'd see it, on Fox and Friends the next morning if he talked about how the IRS is going to audit you at gunpoint. See, yeah, clearly the 8 p.m. time slot is the best piece of real estate in all of cable, particularly for Fox, since it's the number one rated cable network. But I'm sort of wondering,

so Drudge is reporting now that Hannity is getting 8 p.m., that Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Waters are heading to primetime. They're going to be part of the primetime lineup. Fox is saying this is just one of many scenarios. We haven't decided anything yet, but, you know, who knows. How do you think that lineup will be different than the era of Tucker at eight and Hannity and Ingram? First of all, I'm not believing any of these reports until it's actually set in stone.

You know, I think over the last month we've seen that Tucker Carlson was fired for loving Jesus too much, for the Dominion lawsuit, for the racist text, for the sexist text. You know, so these people are all backstabbers, man. They're all, they're all, they're, they're all very type a and, um, and you read this story and there's a lot of people at Fox news, including executives who might benefit from this, you know? Um, so I, I just want to make that point first of all, but let's say that it does go Hannity, uh, Hannity waters, Gutfeld. Um, it's the same crap, man. It's, it's the exact same crap that they've been pushing. Um, you know, Tucker been pushing. Tucker Carlson had a very online audience that was a little bit younger, I think. And so I think that'll be the difference.

But I also think that, again, the way that Tucker found these weird conspiracy theories and elevated them, to be honest with you, I think it requires more work than Jesse Waters or Greg Gutfeld are willing to put in to try to find that type of stuff. Tucker was very much the assignment editor for Fox News and really for all the conservative media. And what he said was that it was the talking points of conservative media and Fox News for the next day, couple of days, whatever you have. So that is missing. But again, the tone and the tenor and the rhetoric, it's exactly the same. Exactly the same. I mean, Kat, you've watched all these guys. It's always seemed to me, sort of like Andrew was saying, that Tucker was a bit more uniquely dangerous than the other guys just because,

like Hannity to me has always seemed like more of a party hack. Like he was sort of towing the Trump administration line or their RNC line and all that kind of stuff. And Tucker was like so into his white nationalism or at least trying to mask loosely mask the white nationalism as news and entertainment and commentary that I wonder if Hannity has the same skills or Gutfeld or Waters who just to me, they seem like sort of JV level tuckers. But I don't know. Maybe they grow into the role. What do you think? I mean, I'll say it this way. When Trump left office, I thought Hannity was going to cry on television because he no longer had his best in the Oval Office. When everything was happening in Brazil with Bolsonaro, that's when I thought Tucker might cry.

Like it's two very different ideas there. And you have some things that like Tucker will say, and then Hannity will immediately say the opposite in the next hour. They just don't have the juice, though. No one has the same juice as Tucker. There's no riz, completely riz-less. And that's true for the rotating host, too. I mean, it's a mess. Yeah, because they've lost a lot of ratings since they've done the rotating host thing. We all know from the Dominion case that Fox is terrified of losing its viewers to OAN and Newsmax. Do you guys ever monitor those networks, too? And do you think Fox is correct to be worried? John, we monitor everything.

Everything in conservative media. Yeah, I don't. I mean, and this is look, I'm just guessing here, but it feels like in situations like this, we always regress to the means, basically. You know, I mean, I think that after the election, after the Arizona call, we saw this exact same thing. And eventually everybody went back. I mean, the truth is the production value on OAN and Newsmax is terrible. I mean, it's really unwatchable TV. And, you know, Fox News is a billion dollar company. They've been doing this for 20 years. And it's what people are familiar with.

And it looks really professional. And it's the names that you recognize and all of that. So my guess is that they, I do not think they're going to bounce back to the ratings they had before, but I think they'll bounce back and be the top cable news channel soon. Kat, you were saying how much Tucker needed Fox.

Do you think he can find success on his new pal's $44 billion dying platform? How do you think that's going to go? Well, we all know Twitter is the most monetizable of all the social media sites. That's why everyone's big followings on Twitter is super rich. But I mean mean he's been waiting it's been like what a month every single day he becomes less and less relevant the only reason is people were like oh my god he got so many views on that because it was a two minute clip and he hadn't spoken in two weeks um for his little preview of the show we don't have a start

date we don't even know if this is just like a negotiating ploy for his contract with Fox. I don't see how that could translate to the same influence he had over the GOP and over the whole channel at Fox on Twitter. I mean, there are plenty of former Fox people who are still right wing grifters. And Tucker sounds like he's just going to be one of those. Do you still plan to watch Tucker on Twitter? Are you sticking with the next generation at Fox? Well, let's see if he has the show first. That seems right. So Trump is still saying he's mad at Fox. Who knows if that's actually true?

How is Fox treating Trump right now? Are they all in? How do they feel about DeSantis or the other candidates? How are they handling the primary from what you guys have been seeing? It's been really interesting. Before Trump got in, they were pretty all in on DeSantis. And once DeSantis started cratering, they really, really backed off. I wouldn't say that they're all in for either candidate. They're just promoting both of them, really. And going after Joe Biden a lot is pretty much what they're doing. I think they're trying really hard to not take sides so far. But, you know, whoever wins the Fox primary has a real leg up in the Republican primary.

So I think as we get closer, you know, that'll start picking up. They'll start picking sides a little bit more clearly. My take on the on the CNN town hall was that as a media critic, I didn't think it was very good journalism. But as someone who desperately wants to beat Trump again, I thought he reminded a lot of voters exactly what they don't like about him. But what do you guys think, Kat? I mean, I did like a whole video on this last week. I just, it was irresponsible. I mean, yes, it was a good reminder, but did we really need the reminder in the first place? We all know who this guy is.

We do. We do. I wonder if like, my whole theory of this, and this speaks to the work that you guys do, my whole theory of 2024 is like, it's going to be a year of reminding people, particularly people who don't, who are casual news consumers, not like us,

about how bad Donald Trump is, what his positions are, what he's like, what his character's like. And this is why you guys are, you know, cutting clips and making sure that people who don't watch Fox all the time can see this. And so there's part of me that thought like, yeah, it was completely irresponsible to do that. But the effect is maybe some casual news consumers who, you know, either they vote once in a while or they needed reminding. Maybe they're going to get some that they're going to look at that and say, yes, he really is bad.

I remember that. And I got to vote him out again. But I don't know what is that wrong? Yeah. You know, I think that like you take a look at the last two elections, the twenty twenty to twenty twenty, these things, January 6 and abortion rights are like two like two huge, huge, huge issues that won those elections for Democrats. And and Trump is out there just signaling, I want to ban abortions. I'm taking credit for Roe v. Wade going away. And by the way, January 6th was a beautiful day. So yeah, I mean, I'm sure, you know, I don't know how much that one particular town hall helps Democrats and Joe Biden, but I'm sure that Joe Biden and his team were the happiest people on the planet when that thing ended after seeing what they're signaling they're going to run on in 2024. I think that it's so weird how Fox in

general seems to be pushing issues that voters don't care about. I remember like eight days before the midterms, Steve Doocy was talking and he was like, but who really cares about democracy and abortion? Democrats should reframe it about the economy. And then like the morning after the midterms, he was like, okay, so polls say that voters cared about democracy and abortion. And they just still haven't let up on that. Like they don't learn anything. They care about Fox News.

Like Andrew said before, it used to help prop up the GOP and it's the other way around now. So this election is going to be messy. This election cycle is going to be messy and the GOP. And it's the other way around now. So this election is going to be messy. This election cycle is going to be messy and hard to watch. I just think it shows like what a pickle the Republican Party is in right now. Again, like to win a primary. Those are things that they have to say. Trump has to say that he is going to pardon January 6th defendants in order to win that primary. He has to say that he wants he doesn't want any abortion in America in order to win that primary. And then you get into the general and it's just death.

You know, it's just it kills their chances. Kat, what are the Fox conspiracies and storylines that aren't breaking through in the mainstream media right now that you think could play a big role in 2024? Like what should all of us be watching out for? Oh, that's such a great question. I mean, the stuff with the Durham report right now, they're going all in on that. And if you've been listening to it for the last three years, every day, like we have, they've been going all in on that for a while. They're going to just pull, you know, a butt her emails. But with that, and like all these weird niche issues about trans people, that's like

a huge thing for Republicans. It doesn't pull well. A lot of people don't want to genocide trans people. But right wing media really hits hard on attacking trans people, especially trans kids. Those are two big things for sure. You know, they'll they'll find something like critical race theory that tries to appeal to parents, you know. And they've signaled that they're going to go after like parental rights a lot, you know. And they never tell you like which parents are the ones getting the rights. It just happens to always be the craziest, you know. Yeah.

But, you know, I think, look, I think they're going to push inflation. I think they're going to push crime is out of control everywhere. I think it's what they are signaling right now is a repeat of 2022. And it didn't work for them, you know. But I think they're just addicted to that type of rhetoric right now. They sort of painted themselves into a corner. And, you know, the politicians have to win those primary voters. And Fox News just needs the viewers.

Like, I mean, put yourself in a Fox News exec's shoes. You know, do they really care who wins? You know that they need viewers. They want to make money. And that's the type of stuff that that that gets viewers and makes them money. Kat, why did you decide to start making videos about Fox on TikTok? How does that format influence what you decide to talk about and how you say it compared to others? Well, I've actually been doing videos for like a while. I do like super cuts and stuff like that for the news of the day or like some crazy narrative that Fox was spinning. And then I

just decided this year, like in January, to do like some on-cam explainers because it gave me a lot more freedom and like going really into a topic rather than just having the clips there or writing something up. And it connected with people. I think a lot of people connect with video, especially after the pandemic. They want to listen to someone who knows what they're talking about,

explain what's going on, especially if it's something they don't watch. And hopefully none of y'all, like no one's watching Fox News for free. And I've just been surprised at how it's connected with people and it's definitely gave given me like a larger way to be able to really dive into these topics um that you can't do in like what 240 characters where do you think uh young people are getting radicalized by the right right now because

obviously fox has a pretty old audience to say the least. And I don't think a lot of young people are watching Fox. But clearly, you can see a lot of the right wing media stars and activists are they tend to be pretty young these days or younger than they used to be. Like, where is this radicalization happening? Is it happening on TikTok? Is it happening on on podcasts? Like where where where is this happening? I mean, there are a lot of places, but I think a big part of it is misogyny. I think that's a huge part of online radicalization for younger people. This especially after like COVID, imagine being in high school and like how confused not to like, you know, say any of that is OK. But it's a very confusing time to be growing up in right now and i think that it's given right-wing grifters and really bad actors more vulnerable targets that

don't know what they're watching at first yeah and what's it been like i know you've faced a lot of harassment threats what's that been like um i mean, all of us at Media Matters definitely get those. Since I've started doing my on-camera stuff, I've grown exponentially. A lot of, you know, sexual stuff, threats, stuff, you know, comments about my appearance. Overall, it just shows that I've hit a nerve and it's like that's the best you can do. So it's kind of nice in that. But that misogynist rhetoric, it's specifically aimed towards women. And Fox is one of those outlets that encourages it.

Like they don't just encourage it. They do it themselves. Tucker would have a 10 minute segment about Nancy Pelosi's chest. That's nuts. And all of these people are just allowing it and endorsing it. And I think that's why it's a huge problem in the online media landscape. Okay, so you guys are both forced to watch Fox every night. You're looking at your screens all the time, Twitter, TikTok. What do you both do to unplug and how often do you get the chance?

They don't chain us down. I want to make that clear. Good. They're not actually forcing us to do it. It's torture. Man, you know, I personally like, I really try to compartmentalize. I mean, when I'm not working, I try to get away from the news as much as possible. Whether that is, you know, I play racquetball and stuff like that, you know, getting outside. We work at night, so we have the entire day. That stuff, which is, which is really, really nice. I enjoy a good video game as much as the next guy, you know, but a little drink helps here and there, you know, I would, I would imagine.

But I think, you know, I do want to say it's like I said, we, we, for the most part, Kat is on my team. It's, it's me and Kat and four other people., for the most part, Kat is on my team. It's me and Kat and four other people. And for the most part, we really do have a good time. We try to make it fun. We all know that it's awful. But I do think that knowing that you're exposing these people and their awful views to people who, you know, wouldn't normally know how awful they are, that helps.

It really does help. Kat, what about you? Right now, Tears of the kingdom is really helping um it rocks i keep trying to pressure andrew into playing it um i'm trying to visit every museum in dc but you know it's the compartmentalization it's uh doing things you like hanging around with people that you love um and really enjoying things you forget to do that sometimes and it's in any job and uh it's nice to do more of that uh kat and andrew thank you so much for joining offline and uh and thanks for all the work you're

doing thank you for watching this garbage so that uh we don't have to appreciate it thank you so much for having us john Okay, we're back. And I'm here with Max Fisher. Hey, buddy. Hey there. To talk about our second offline challenge. This was, the theme was mindfulness. Deep enlightenment.

Deep enlightenment. And just as a reminder, it was morning meditation, the OneSec app, which prompts you to take a deep breath and wait a second before you open a given app. And then cover photos on our phone. Mine was Emma giving me a thumbs up and trying to encourage me in a positive way. Mine was producer Austin angrily, terrifyingly, frankly, scolding me to put down my phone. Yeah. Okay. So that was it. Although he cropped it incorrectly.

So instead of saying, put down your phone, it says, put down our phone. Which was actually more helpful because every time I had a little laugh and I was like, yeah, I should put down our phone well um I had I had Emma on my phone which raised a lot of questions for people when I was at the wedding over the weekend it was like who's that woman on your phone I got a lot of that too yes why do you have that angry guy on your phone which is actually it was a good way yeah to talk about it I don't know if you're finding this but I am finding both people who listen to the show and just people in my life who notice me always like messing around with a weird phone now are getting like really into it yes like i have a couple of friends who are getting i thought

this was really clever getting flip phones to they're a married couple getting flip phones and they're just going to use them for one day a week but they're both going to be on it yeah which i think is a nice idea i had a friend saying he wants to do the flip phone thing. They're great. I'm really pushing it on people. Okay. So how do you think it went? So I found that my screen time got cut more than in half from what it was smartphone is like psychically and emotionally damaging to me and the things that I wanted to change about my life. I like immediately backslid hard on and it like led me to a realization about why I think that is and like what it has to do with like where the smartphone addiction comes from and how to treat it. But we'll get to that. I'll just tell you about how it was actually effective. I really found the OneSec app specifically by forcing me to take a pause every time I wanted to open an app. Just for a few seconds, it just puts up a

little loading screen and says, do you really want to open Twitter or Instagram? And usually, if I thought about it just for a second, the answer was no. And I was like, I actually don't want to. Or it would interrupt me. I do a lot of switching between apps. When I'm doom scrolling, which I didn't even realize. I didn't realize I would go back and forth, Slack, Twitter, Instagram, Twitter, Instagram, Slack. But because I was getting bumped every time by this app, I was like, oh, I've been doing this for 20 minutes and I'm throwing my life away on these apps. Maybe I should go do literally anything else. So I think the meditation sucked.

I did. I'm going to be honest with you. Don't tell Caroline I didn't do the meditation. So I have tried to meditate before. Me too. Because you moved to Los Angeles, you have to meditate. I had an ex who made me meditate every morning. And I got so much organizing of my day done during the meditations. I just, so I, and I didn't, first of all, I didn't want to sit around and just meditate sitting. So I looked on Spotify for a walking meditation. And I did the walk.

So I do this my morning, my morning 5 a.m. walk to Starbucks. The thing that you didn't like about the meditation was the meditating do i have that right yeah so well then i said it was a walking meditation so i was like great so i do my walk to starbucks 5 30 in the morning listening to the meditation first of all all the meditation voices i think it's this like same british woman uh second of all it was like you know listen to your feet hitting the pavement and look at a tree okay and i'm like yeah it's nice but like it was like you know listen to your feet hitting the pavement and look at a tree and I'm like yeah it's nice

but it's like five seconds I can do it and then I'm just thinking about something else it didn't make me want to use my phone

like I was fine not having the phone but my mind was wandering because why am I focusing on the fucking tree there's a lot to think about so that's what I thought

about meditation the Emma cover photo i don't know that it really uh i appreciate emma i appreciate you um giving me the positive reinforcement i don't know that it really affected my phone use all that much the one sec app i think i made a mistake which is I put the OneSec app on Safari. Okay. And Safari. Do you do a lot of Safari doom scrolling? No.

Okay. That's the problem. So you're saying that you cheated. Either Emma or Austin said they were putting it on Safari. Emma did. And so I was like, that's a good idea. Blame the producer. Yeah, right.

But then the problem with Safari is like every time I'm using Safari, it's for like a specific purpose, right? And so I would take a breath. Sometimes it's nice. Breathing is good. I just complained about meditation. Remembering to take deep breaths. Take a breath is helpful.

That is very helpful. But it didn't really, like Safari is not really my problem. But I did two additional challenges on my own bonus challenges bonus challenges this week because you had to be the a student because i yeah this is uh this is partly why i'm a control freak a personality um no so i removed twitter from my phone wow because after last week after the two weeks ago after the flip phone thing i was like i don't need twitter on my phone i'm not going to be done with twitter forever. When I sit at a laptop, I'll go on Twitter on

the Safari, but not on my phone. So I took Twitter off my phone and then I changed my notifications on my phone so that it's only badges on the apps when I have a new text or a new notification and nothing pops up on the screen like a banner when I'm getting a Slack or a message or anything like that. Those two things really helped with my phone time. The notifications are, a point that someone made to me when I was reporting the books is the notifications are not for you. The notifications are for the makers of the apps to get you to spend more time on the apps and exploiting the fact that you think that you need to see the latest whatever to get you to spend more time on it.

Well, also, so Tommy Vitor has had notifications just like this for a long time. Really? And I was always like, why are you doing that? And I'm like, and then I was like, you need Tommy for something? He doesn't respond fast enough because he's not, and I was like, no, and then once I did it,

I'm like, of course you don't need these. Right. Like just check your phone every once in a while and you'll see all your texts. It's not like your problem was you weren't checking your phone enough. Right. So that's what I thought about that. And then I was so good about not checking my phone that when I was at the wedding, I wasn't with Emily at some point and I wasn't checking my phone. And she texted our group chain of people who were at the wedding was like, if someone is around John, can you please have him check his phone?

Wow. Yeah. So you're saying that you were two weeks into the offline challenge and you were so disconnected that your wife is begging you to spend more time on your smartphone. Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. And someone came up to me and said, hey, will you check your phone?

Because Emily is looking for you. You know what? They're just, they're not enlightened like us. They don't. Incredible. And someone came up to me and said, hey, will you check your phone? Because Emily is looking for you. You know what? They're not enlightened like us. They're not enlightened like us. They don't get that it's just good. You just got to exist, man. You just got to be in the world. So did you feel better?

This week? This week was not as much of a change as last week. Yeah. And I do think that maybe the mindfulness stuff is a little too soft. I agree with that. And I also feel like the thing that I learned is that it's great to reduce screen time because I got two hours a day of my life back this week, which was amazing.

But the ways that, and we've talked about this, the ways that your smartphone and your smartphone addiction and your social media addiction affects all the other things in your life and the way that your brain works with absolutely still with me and i can give you two examples for that the first was that donald trump held you may have heard about this held a cnn town hall oh yeah and i little cable network i like yeah yeah i like everyone else got very very mad mad at CNN on Twitter and did some like angry yelling at CNN. And they'd like, there were some pretty good angry tweets. They got some good numbers, which is shameful that I know that and care about it. And I was like feeling good about that and be like, yeah, I showed them. And then I was listening to you on Pod Save America, which for listeners who don't know, John has this side

podcast he does. It's like a little hobby he has. It's an offline spinoff. It's an offline spinoff. That's right. We're all very supportive of his hobbies. We think it's great. You made the point that whatever the merits of CNN's decision to both platform Donald Trump and then to promote to its 8 p.m. news hour someone who has spread the great replacement conspiracy theory. The real issue here is that, you know, an authoritarian is going to be back on the ballot in 18 months, and we're all getting a little bit distracted from that. And as soon as you said that, I realized, oh, I have completely backslid into letting social media dictate what I think and what I care about. And I'm contributing to it too, to this national distraction.

It's so funny that you say that because I would have been, a couple years ago, you can probably find clips of me on Pod Save America doing this, right there screaming about CNN. I watched the CNN town hall and we were talking in our Discord channel. Subscribe, subscription service. Everyone subscribe to our good friends at the pod. were talking in our discord channel subscribe subscription service everyone's great good friends of the pod and so i was in the discord channel and i was like i'm going to be in the discord channel and i'm not going to look at twitter during the town hall huh and and the discord channel people were upset by cnn but i'm also like side texting with pfeiffer and tommy and love it and we're like i don't know, I think it's bad that he's on,

but he's saying a lot of bad things that are probably unpopular. And again, I think I would have been just like you were, I would have been taken along by the social media mindset where everyone has the same opinion. Right. And then I'm contributing to that and I'm patting myself on the back for telling people what they already think and contributing to the distraction from what is actually important. Yeah. this week where I was like, I was stressed. I didn't sleep well. I was kind of like not feeling great. And I back slid really hard. I spent like three hours on my phone. And this is actually the day that we got our phones back.

So I like was half a day and I was just all over it. And I was telling myself, it's okay to like give myself a little smartphone time because I'm not feeling great. And I can like have a little break. But of course that is like anyone who has dealt with like addiction in any capacity, which is again what this is.

That's the precise moment when it is the most important to be controlling your addiction. And it is the worst to backslide. You don't give yourself the little treat of, you know, the hit of heroin when you're feeling the most down. And of course, it made me feel so much worse, not just that day, but like basically for the rest of the week because I had blown that day on it. I had the same experience in that we did this thing Wednesday, Thursday, I was still pretty good. And even though I had my phone back, Friday, we went to the wedding and we were in the wedding Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And I was like talking with

everyone, having great conversations, very enlightened, not checking my phone clearly, even when my wife needed me. Monday, got back from the wedding, tired, a little hungover. Yeah. And hadn't slept great the night before. Charlie was up in the middle of the night. Right. And so Monday and yesterday, yesterday was also very tired. Also, I had an annual checkup, so I had to fast in the morning.

I was very hungry. I didn't eat anything until noon. And Monday and Tuesday, I was all over my phone. And the app that I was checking the most was Instagram, which is what I should have put one second on. And I was like, I don't even care that much about Instagram. I don't post Instagrams that much. And now Instagram does the thing where, you know, it doesn't just show you posts from people you follow, but just like, I think you might like this post. I'm going through all I'm like I don't even

know these fucking people why am I just checking Instagram deep addictive behavior deep addictive you did I did notice early in this week I think you tagged me twice on Instagram and I was like my guy call your sponsor I should have done one second on Instagram or I should have just deleted it from my phone and I thought about that too it's like should I should have done one second on Instagram or I should have just deleted it from my phone. And I thought about that too. I was like, should I just get rid of Instagram along with Twitter? But I didn't because I was like, then I don't have anything to check. Right, right. Because then you might have to actually deal with the things that you're feeling.

And I was talking to a friend of mine. We were having lunch. I was telling her about this and about, you know, the kind of struggles with it and the phones. And she said, it sounds like you don't need a new phone. You need a new personality. It was so mean, but pretty true. And I do, I feel like the thing that I have come around to, let me put that a different way. Something that I found myself thinking about, I, years ago, I was in a long-term relationship with someone who was in recovery. So I went to a lot

of meetings too, because that's something you do. And something that I would hear people in recovery say a lot is that the addiction is a big deal. It's serious. You need to treat that. But the addiction is also a symptom as well as a cause. And you need to treat the things in your life that are… That's a very, very wise point. Yeah.

I thought, right. It's a lot of wisdom. I mean, this is kind of what we're doing right is smartphone uh anonymous um it really has made me think that the smartphone addiction is a huge thing it's a enormous part of it but that solving that in and of itself is not going to fix it that and i think we kind of learned that with the flip phone week too is that like i really and i am going to go into this week really trying to think about not just what are the ways that I'm addicted to my phone, but what are the things in my life and the choices I'm making in my life and the ways that I feel that are leading me to reach for the phone to regulate my emotions, to help with how I'm

feeling, how am I existing in the world? Because I think we do have to solve those two things to solve our entire lives. It's kind of where I'm ending up. It's a longer podcast. No, I ended up being thankful that mindfulness came after cold turkey flip phones only because we did one week where it was cold turkey and very, very intense and very strict.

And then we did a week that I thought was very mild. Very mild. And the mild week showed me how fast I could go back to the addictive behavior. So I do think that getting something in between is going to be the answer. A listener wrote in to us and suggested a way to reduce phone addiction that you use.

Let's listen. Oh, Max! What you doing over here? Just getting some work done. So why don't you explain this Post-it to me? Where did this come from? This is a great listener suggestion. Put a Post-it note on your phone that reminds you not to pick it up

so that when you pick up your phone and you look at it, you see this little note to yourself that says, hey, don't pick up your phone. You've got better things to do. So you're being a goody two-shoes and you did an extra challenge on top of this week's challenge oh i'm getting a phone call from who an unknown number hello this is your chancellor put down your goddamn phone okay you got me i'm sorry post a note so let me read to you from the email from the listener uh this

is from michaela freed who wrote into offline at crooked.com, which we love. We love hearing from you. Yes. If you have a trick, something that has worked for you, I tried this suggestion from Mikella, which I loved. I've tried all the technology ways to curb my phone addiction. I want to tell you about my strategy. The one that I keep coming back to is putting a sticky note over my screen. I have a big sticky note, cover most of my screen. I write a message on note, cover most of my screen. I write a message on it. The message is usually, you don't need to see it right away, or it's not an emergency, it can wait,

or a list of things I want to get done that day. Some days I use it as a tally for how many times I pick up my phone. It's especially useful because I can see at the end of the day if the sticky note is still sticking to the screen, if it worked or not. So let me show you my sticky note. No. No. And honestly, it really works. I found it to be really effective.

I think because it's a message from me to myself, it's like, you don't need this. You don't need to do it. It's also, it's just, it's a little bit cumbersome in order to, and I put it right over the notifications. If I want to see the notifications notifications to take off the sticky note and i know like michaela said if i take it off too many times it's not going to stick and then i'm going to feel bad about myself yeah and the um one thing that was coming up in research for the book

too is that social media apps found a version of this just adding friction is the word they use for it, making it a little bit harder to open an app does enormous things for reducing how often people use it. Now, also how they use it, Twitter before the election last year, Twitter used to be governed responsibly. I know it's kind of weird to hear about that. They added a prompt if you wanted to retweet something, just a little pop-up would come up and say, are you sure you want to retweet it? Or be sure to add a thoughtful message, something like that. And just that having to make one little extra tap through that declined retweets by 20% and significantly reduced the spread of misinformation on Twitter in advance of the election, just from that one little bit of friction. And that was, I think, the most helpful thing about OneSec and about the sticky pad.

Friction is good. And I think we're learning a lot about both what works, but also what we need, which is maybe like weirdly a little bit different. Like the things that reduce your time on the screen might not be the same as the thing that make your relationship to the screen healthier. That's right. All right. When we come back, Carolyn Dunphy will be back to introduce this week's challenge. Embracing.

All right. We're back with, uh, Carolyn Dunphy is back. Uh, greetings, gentlemen. Uh, I mean, bachelors. Ooh. Yes. Been waiting for this one. So congratulations to making to week three of the Offline Challenge. Uh, for those of you listening at home, we are doing yet again another low-budget parody of a reality TV show.

Where's the costume? It's this very last Rose of Summer. It looks like it's from last summer. Rose is not doing so great. But enough about my love life. So let's hop into it. Okay. John F.

Can I grab you for a second? John F., you really committed to the offline challenge this week. You deleted Twitter off your apps, and I just think that's super brave. And I don't think I could ever even do something like that. But I did notice that the Twitter app was on your menu bar and that doesn't exactly scream like you're going to be really fully committed to a better relationship with your phone. So can you kind of elaborate on where you're at with your home screen and what is on your home screen right now? Yeah. So I did have Twitter at the bottom, which I hadn't even realized until you guys all just mentioned this that that was that was a big part of the problem right right so now it's gone completely

and my home bar here is my mail my email Spotify where it has replaced Twitter that's cool whatsapp great and iMessage see I'd love to hear that you're really growing from this challenge it seems that you're really growing from this challenge. It seems that you're really executing. But Max F, it seems like you're backsliding a little bit on this offline challenge. I do appreciate that you added a post-it to your phone. It's super unique and bold. I don't think i would ever do something like that it's one of my best traits as a bachelor that i have a crippling phone addiction that requires a post-it note yeah sure people will find that really attractive you put that on your raya profile my raya profile is actually just a post-it note that says no it's actually just a slideshow of the word no it's so weird that I haven't found anyone. Yeah. And that's why we pay $200 a year for someone to swipe no at the word no.

So, you know, tell me about what was the hardest part about mindfulness that you went out of your way to ignore it? I think it's the fact that disengaging from your phone in and of itself will not fix your problems in life. And that is actually what makes you want to be addicted to your phone. And also just like lack of self-control. It's hard. You got that little phone in front of you. You got that Instagram. It's got all the dopamine hits on it. Yeah. Who needs anxiety when I can just doom scroll Amazon hauls? And then you also get the anxiety too. Right. You get both for the price of one. Exactly.

I love a deal. And that's why I'm a Maxinista. Wow. Wow. Yeah. That's exciting. I am. Officially launching the Maxinista.

That's me. Yeah. It's crooked.com slash Maxinista. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. We also have an exclusive subscriber, Friends of the Maxinistas. That's me. Yeah. It's crooked.com slash Maxinista. Yeah, that's it. We also have an exclusive subscriber, Friends of the Maxinistas. Friends of the Maxinistas.

It is $300 a month. Friends of the Chancellor. All of these channels are available on our Discord. So check them out. Amazing. The Discord is just me and my cat,

but we're looking for more subscribers. But we're looking for more subscribers. For sure. More people to tell you no. No. Yeah. No on a Post-it. I think you should put those post-its all around your

apartment like it's memento. I actually should put one on the fridge too. A tattoo on myself. Yeah. Just keep just no everywhere. But I will understand that the no is for my personality. Yeah. Like no, don't be like that. And then people will be on Raya and be like, oh my God, he's so different. He's the no guy. He's the no guy. Oh my God,

you've matched with the no guy? I heard he works at Crooked Media. Crookedmedia.com slash no. Slash no guy. Slash no guy. And you guys are such amazing gentlemen and bachelors. But it brings me such sadness that we have to do the offline challenge rose ceremony.

Are we looking at screen time? Last time we didn't do screen time first. And then the election was stolen from me and the Maxinistas were furious. It sounds like someone's bitter. It sounds like someone's bitter. It sure does. It sure does. It sure does. What do you think I was so upset about this last week?

Well, sore winner, sore loser. I'm sorry that I La La Land slash moonlit you. Okay. Okay. You know what? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I will be La La Land any day of the week.

My guy Damien Chazelle is great. All right. That's a horrible take, but at least. Someone's not getting on Keep It anytime soon. Yeah, we got it. Love to hear what they have to say about that. Babylon, five stars. Six stars.

Six stars. And so now we have to start the offline rose ceremony. Max F, please report your screen time. Okay, let me remove my Post-it note. Okay, give me just a second here. We'll wait. Okay, so before the screen time challenge, I was at four and a half hours a day. First day back was not so good, two and a half hours. But then after that, two hours.

Then one hour and six minutes. One hour and one minute, one hour and 30 minutes, two hours, 57 minutes, and today so far is six minutes. That's your full screen time? Well, I was...

Oh, I lost this one. Uh-oh. Really? Yeah. I mean, obviously. So... Let's see. Did you start with last Wednesday or last Thursday?

Last Wednesday. Okay. That was my backsliding. John F., please report your screen time. Okay. Last Wednesday was one hour, 57 minutes. Last Thursday was three hours, 26 minutes. Friday was two hours, 23 minutes.

Saturday was three hours, eight minutes. Sunday was five hours, three Saturday was 3 hours 8 minutes Sunday was 5 hours 3 minutes Oh my god I shouldn't have let Emily drive home from the wedding No You were hungover It's okay What are you MBS over here? I shouldn't have let my wife drive

That was very nice of her But when I drove to the wedding I drove to the wedding My screen time was great I'm sorry Let me look into the camera I believe that women can drive But when I drove to the wedding, I drove to the wedding. My screen time was great. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I take that. Let me look into the camera.

I believe that women can drive. Unlike my co-host here on the offline podcast. But I will also say that I famously cannot drive. I have been in a car with Lovett and he was gripping like a mom. Like, oh, God. Oh, God. Have you ever been in a car where Lovett drove? Well, Jesus Christ.

Never do it. Now I feel so much better it's terrifying doesn't his car drive himself yeah it's actually it's gotten better now that he is drives the uh elon musk mobile yes uh we love someone that's shameless uh monday was three hours 27 okay yesterday was 3 35 and today is one hour one minute oh buddy i lost this one shit well i still have to go on with the script sorry can i since i i was gonna save this for when i thought john was gonna want and i was gonna try to overturn the results i this week caught john in the bathroom scrolling his phone ah he did he did and? And I screamed at you too.

You did. And I almost dropped it in the air. I know. I felt a little bad because I like burst in and I saw you in a mirror and I called you

out and you tried to hide the phone. See? You'd be a great chancellor. You're chancellor in training. I will say if people

recall from when we first started this, my daily pickups, remember we're like 268? Yeah. 114. Okay, that's great. And last week was 85.

So like, oh that's great. Things are, at least I'm improving. There's different qualitative measurements. But I did not improve as much as Max. No, what are your pickups? 106, 81, 66, 21, 103. All right, two men, one rose, one stays, one goes. John F., will you accept this rose as a step

in the right direction with your phone? What? What? What? What? What? What are you doing? I'm just kidding.

I did that. I went out of my way to make you feel I was going to flip this table. That was the whole point. That was the whole point. We were about to have Bedlam in the studio. It's like, one stays, one goes.

Max, I got one. Oh, thank you, Chancellor. You won. You earned it. You did. This rose is literally falling apart in my hands. Yeah, for the listeners at home, it is probably the last rose of summer.

It's orange. It's the saddest rose I've ever seen. It's orange, and it was cheap because it was free. When I say low budget, we're low budget, baby. You find it on the street. I am extremely competitive. And now I really want to win next week. So what do we have for next week?

So next week is all about physical restrictions. So it's divided into three parts. Okay. First part is we're changing your phone settings so that your menu and everything will appear in grayscale, like you're in a black and white movie. Wow. I've been eager to try this. I'm intrigued by how it will actually help or hurt. This is actually something I heard a lot about from people in Silicon Valley would swear by this.

Really? As a tactic for you. And it's really easy. Anybody can do it on your phone. You can just go to settings and change it to grayscale. Crazy. Okay. And then the second part is lock boxes. And then the third part are comically insane phone cases. Oh, my gosh. And so grayscale. Max, can you talk about how color makes you more addicted to your phone. So your phone and the apps on your phone are deliberately and consciously designed

in mimicry of slot machines. And there's a whole bunch of science and psychology that went into development of slot machines and then your phones to use a combination of haptic feedback,

which is the phone vibrating, light, and especially color. And certain combinations of color to make you want to look at your phone and give you that dopamine every time you look at your phone. That is fascinating.

That's why the badges are red. That's why the background is blue. That's why this is very bright colors. And when you take that away with grayscale, I think that you will find this week and people who are following along will find immediately, immediately it makes the phone just way less compelling to look at and way less addictive. Right. It's interesting. My niece, who's almost a year old, my brother's just getting to the point of like, just here's the iPad because I'm busy.

Seeing her face light up that quickly, the moment they get that in their hands is terrifying. I know. It's absolutely haunting. And then you go, oh God, I must look like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. That was what John looked like when he got a smartphone. That's right. We could barely even get we could we could barely get through that script because you're like my iPhone. Do I get it back? Do I get it back yet? And then in terms of lock boxes, I feel like you interviewed Johan Hari. Yes. And about how helpful it is to just put your phone away even at least for an hour in terms of productivity. Could you speak more to that?

Yeah. I mean, his whole book was about it's called Stolen Focus. And it wasn't just about being like addicted to the screen. It's what it does to other tasks that you're doing in life. Right. addicted to the screen it's what it does to other tasks that you're doing in life right and the lock box you set it for like an hour and no matter what you can't get the phone out during that hour brutal which should be interesting for us yeah i always find i'm guessing we can't do the lock box hour from like two to three in the morning right no no of course not okay because then

you'll be well by then you'll be up at four to start your day. I was going to say four o'clock. That's like peak phone usage for me. I'm doing great. I'm thriving. Okay. So there's this thing. I always like to pitch it to men over 30. It's called-

I'm barely over 30. Therapy. It's great. I thought that's what this was. It's great. No, no. This is a podcast. This is a podcast. It kind. It's great. I thought that's what this was. It's great. No, no, no. This is a podcast. This is a podcast.

It kind of feels like therapy. Famously, a lot of you guys mistake the two, but it's okay. But who am I? I'm just another

podcast hoax. I'm just calling balls and strikes as I see them. That's all you're doing. That's all I'm doing. I'm just calling balls and strikes.

I would like, at the end of this, our big hack for everyone for how to treat your smartphone addiction is get a podcast. Yeah. Yeah, get a podcast.

Everyone, yeah. And that is... Get your podcast and then keep your phone in the other room while you're hosting the podcast. Exactly. And then you're always busy

and never looking at your phone. And then the third part is comically insane phone cases. Oh boy. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, you have nothing to fear except fear itself. Except that bee has never seen these phone cases. Emma, can you please present these?

Oh, boy. Oh, my God. They are giant, beautiful. These are huge. Clown cases. Say hi. So funny. It says Joker on it.

It's an enormous clown. I feel like this is going to keep me from taking my phone out for the humiliation of it because it looks ridiculous. It also is, like, I'm not going to be able to keep this in my pocket. Very much. Oh, yeah. What about my pocket? You have to hold it the whole time. What if we bring back cargo pants?

They are back. This is going to look even worse if I'm holding to hold it the whole time. What if we bring back cargo pants? They are back. This is going to look even worse if I'm holding this up at the urinal. So these giant clown cases are here to, much like me, are here to embarrass you so that you don't use your phone anymore. Chancellor clown case. Look at this. It's beautiful. And Max, since you won and accepted the rose. Boy Clown Case. Look at this. That's beautiful. And Max, since you won and accepted the Rose,

you get one day without the Clown Case. Oh, that's great. I have friends visiting this week, so sometime when they're going to be here, if they can not see the Clown Case, that would be great. That would be ideal, because they'd be like, wow, you've really adjusted to LA.

Yeah, they're cool East Coast friends I don't want to judge me too much no they're gonna judge you anyways it's true yeah go out Friday night maybe not anymore maybe not anymore

all right well it's been wonderful good luck bachelors and I'll see you next week we'll see you next week thank you thanks everyone we'll see you next week. is our sound editor. Kyle Seglin, Charlotte Landis, and Vassilis Fotopoulos sound engineered the show. Jordan Katz and Kenny Siegel

take care of our music. Thanks to Michael Martinez, Ari Schwartz, Amelia Montooth, and Sandy Gerard for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn and Rachel Gajewski, who film and share our episodes

as videos every week. It can be overwhelming to try to find out what to focus on in a world with overlapping crises and a relentless news cycle. Over the last three years, In the Bubble, which is hosted by former White House advisor Andy Slavitt, has been known for timely conversations featuring life-saving information about COVID, headliner guests to explain the news, and some dad jokes. Every Wednesday, Andy takes the time that's needed to go beyond the headlines, We'll see you next time.